Author: Markus

European Pool Championships 2011 Day 3…..what a day….

Its about 5 in the morning right now and finally I finished everything.
Today I tried to pick up my girlfriend from Brno to go to the EC. At my first stop at a gas station i figured out that both of my tires in the back are missing a lot of air. In one of them I saw a screw sticking out.
So I went to the nearest tire shop, so they can have a look at it. A lot of car mechanics there…..but nobody had time (that was what they said….looked like they rather go for lunch then to fix my car).
Anyway, I was lucky to call the guys from Fleischman Reifen in Klosterneuburg (www.fleischmann-reifen.at). They promised me to fix my tires as soon as possible….30 mins later I arrived there and another 45mins later they fixed both tires and I was on my way to Brno (Thanks everybody there for the great work). I had a Screw and a nail in each of them…..maybe bad luck or somebody does not like me (wondering about that because I am very rarely at home and when I am mostly sleeping)
I arrived very late in Brno and my navigation system said we will arrive at 8:30pm in Brandenburg.
The bad thing was that my girl already missed one game because of a business trip (Marketa traveled the whole week….) and the next mach was @ 7:30pm.
The only thing I can say is: We made it somehow.

The EC:

My girl immediately started to play and I started to shoot pictures.
It was so nice to see all my friends again…..a lot of people just came to me and said hi….thanks for that!!
My girl won her match against Anna Grintsuk 6:4 and went to the hotel then to get some rest.
I stayed there until the finals.
Tomasz Kaplan won against Fabio Petroni in the finals …. Fabio did not had much opportunities to come to the table.
Jasmin Ouschan won against Line Kjorsvik and is again Europen staight pool champion.

Congratulations to all of the players!!!

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14.1, 8 Ball, 9 Ball Teams Prague Feb 2011

This weekend I went with my Girl to Prague, she played there teams with Michal Gavenciak and David Žalman.
I was really tired from some exhausting weeks @ work and had a hard time watching the matches. Anyway I wanted to shoot some pics again this weekend and so I took my cam with me and did that. We had a great lunch there and at the end of the day my girls team won the competition and I was happy to be on our way home. Hopefully next time I will be more awake and able to write more about the tournament ;-)

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16th annual X-Mas Open in Wolfsberg

That’s an event I am waiting for the whole year.
I am always happy to go there, because of seeing some good friends there, meeting the people of Chicago Billiards and participating the X-Mas Open.

We arrived on thursday at Gasthof Stoff (http://members.aon.at/~jperusch/ ). Super nice rooms, a swimming pool, sauna, solarium and a dream of a breakfast for a price you will not believe.
After checking in we went to Chicago Billiards to participate the Thursday tournament there. During warm up we met my friends Steve Cliff (http://www.billardcorner.com/) and Ruth again.
With a little luck I won this tournament ;-)

Next day we went skiing, swimming and relaxed in the sauna.

Saturday morning I was kind of nervous, because I haven’t played a tournament for a long time. I played my first match against Albin Ouschan senior (father of Albin and Jasmin).
Wow I was super nervous and shaky. I missed some balls but after curving a thin cut the whole table down into the pocket I felt more comfortable.
After this ball I played safe and thin cut another ball in and then I thin cut the 8 Ball down the whole table…..just in front of the pocket the 8 ball made a little curve and stopped there.
So I lost this game but felt very good and won the match (5:3).

My next opponent was Christian Stadler, a strong player from Chicago Billards.
I won the lag and started to break. Don’t remember the whole match but I felt good and played stupid dangerous shots (like playing the two of the nine to get position on the three)
At 4:3 for me I warped the 1 from a difficult angel in a half blocked pocket to get position on the two, with a little help from the 8 Ball I did perfect on that shot.
I missed a position badly during this game and had to bank a ball to recover my next position. After three stun shots later I won 5:3.

Now I had plenty of time to shoot some pictures and finally met Tadej Tinev ;-)……after more then an hour I heard the announcement: Markus Hofstätter against Mario He.
That was the third time I played Mario. Mario won the lag and when I get it right the first game. He surprisely missed a ball on the second and I ran this one.
I broke and and ran the next rack. I broke dry on the next one, Mario offert me a super tough push-out and I gave it back. He curved a ball in and ran this rack.
Score was 2:2. He ran the next rack and had to play push on the next one. I gave the push back and he missed, so I finished that one. I broke again dry and he finished this rack. Score was 4:3 and for some reason I thought it was 5:3 and wanted to shake his hand.
He ran the last rack and so I it finally ended up with 5:3. I was happy with my game on this one. Just reminded me to practice my break again.

I played the next game on the same table against Mirzet Pandur. I felt very comfortable the whole match and did some nice escapes and played a good slow roll save down the whole table but I was never able to run a rack because of to many mistakes on my side. So I earned a 5:0 loss.
Was a bit strange because I felt good during the whole match….but shit happens and I finished on place 33 out of 110…..so not to bad for my first tournament after a while.

On the final day we saw some world-class matches. Mario played amazingly against Vilmos Földes and won. Later he lost against Gábor Solymosi who gave him no chance to come to the table until 5 or 6:0.
Markut Alexander played against Ercul Matjaz and after a 8:1 lead for Markut he did some mistakes and Ercul came back, but Markut won @ the end.

So the final match was Gábor Solymosi against Markut Alexander. Both player where struggling but Gábor won it.

Congratulations to all players!!!!

And thanks again to Friedl Rassi to be such a nice host for this tournament. See you guys again next year!

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